This way to the stars

The End of the Day

Ok. The suspense is (figuratively) killing me! We still haven't received our checked quiz papers in Filipino. If Coroza's gonna give me an F (if he hasn't done so already), he should at the very least spare me this anticipation.

On the whole, Ateneo is NOT doing a good job of making itself likable to yours truly. It preferred to wring our Saturdays from us (again) as if summer classes were not enough, and decided to give us a nice extended orientation by way of...INTACT Guidance Center Orientation.

INTACT means Introduction to Ateneo Culture and Tradition (yup, Ateneo really does love its acronyms). All freshmen are required the subject (which has ZERO credit, and therefore USELESS) once a week during their first sem. Its basically like one extended semester-long OrSem, wherein unwilling, grumbling, and begrudging students are stuffed down the throats with the Goodly Ateneo Spirituality fluff - being people for others, being the self-proclaimed "light of the Lord" - all those stuff that have been similarly crammed into my brain ever since I set foot in a Catholic school (which was ever since Grade 1).

Give us a break - I'm suffocating already! I intend to have a freakkin' life.

And Ateneo seems to be DEAD SET on taking it away from me by stripping me off the last vestiges of free time I've got left.

Don't get me wrong though. It's not as if I haven't learned something even remotely useful in that four-hour Saturday session. Since the Guidance Center administered the session, they gave us the results of personality and aptitude tests we had taken previously (yes, in a past Saturday). I received YET ANOTHER confirmation that I was an introvert who basically makes judgments based on her head and not on her heart - does that mean that I am an antisocial geekaloid? I am usually fascinated with personality analysis; we did that a lot during my Psychology elective in my fourth year. But then, I know that personality can encompass qualities more varied, complex, and even contradicting that its nature shouldn't be limited to such dichotomous categories - in other words, personality isn't simply defined in black and white. Like other things, it too has its varieites gray areas.

For example, I know that I'm mostly an introvert, but I think that I can speak and defend my ideas in public better than most of my blockmates. This isn't a vain conjecture; it really happened in my Botany class. I was explaining my essay in the usual bulleted yet connected flow in the way our High School Argumentation and Debate teacher Atty. de Leon taught us, and my blockmates were positively amazed. After that I was usually the one called by my groupmates to speak or report for them.

So I guess that in the middle of all this reflecting and philosophizing, I'm realizing one thing - that a lot of things can be so varied and contradicting. Ateneo doles out considerably less homework than St. Paul, but takes away our Saturdays and summer holidays in retaliation. My blockmates came from different backgrounds and schools, which was why they were drooling at the mouth when I explained something in the usual no-big-deal St. Paul way.

And at the end of the day, it really doesn't matter whether or not I receive my Filipino quiz paper (hopefully devoid of the big red F), or whether Ateneo makes or breaks my precious free time, or whether St. Paul-acquired habits would stay or disappear. Because I wouldn't care either. I'd always find a way to make it work in spite of the varied circumstances that fling themselves in my life.

The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. And Stephanie carest not one bit.

posted by steph @ 10:51 PM